7 search hits

Let P c R^n, n >= 2, be a centrally symmetric, convex n-polytope with 2r vertices, and P be a family of m >= n + 1 homothetical copies of P. We show that a hyperplane transversal of all members of P (it it exists) can be found in O(rm) time.

In this survey we deal with the location of hyperplanes in n-dimensional normed spaces, i.e., we present all known results and a unifying approach to the so-called median hyperplane problem in Minkowski spaces. We describe how to find a hyperplane H minimizing the weighted sum f(H) of distances to a given, finite set of demand points. In robust statistics and operations research such an optimal hyperplane is called a median hyperplane.After summarizing the known results for the Euclidean and rectangular situation, we show that for all distance measures d derived from norms one of the hyperplanes minimizing f(H) is the affine hull of n of the demand points and, moreover, that each median hyperplane is a halving one (in a sense defined below) with respect to the geiven point set. Also an independence of norm result for finding optimal hyperplanes with fixed slope will be given. Furthermore we discuss how these geometric criteria can be used for algorithmical approaches to median hyperplanes, with an extra discussion for the case of polyhedral norms. And finally a characterizatio of all smooth norms by a sharpened incidence criterion for median hyperplanes is mentioned.

In line location problems the objective is to find a straight line which minimizes the sum of distances, or the maximum distance, respectively to a given set of existing facilities in the plane. These problems have well solved. In this paper we deal with restricted line location problems, i.e. we have given a set in the plane where the line is not allowed to pass through. With the help of a geometric duality we solve such problems for the vertical distance and then extend these results to block norms and some of them even to arbitrary norms. For all norms we give a finite candidate set for the optimal line.

In this paper we consider the problem of optimizing a piecewise-linear objective function over a non-convex domain. In particular we do not allow the solution to lie in the interior of a prespecified region R. We discuss the geometrical properties of this problems and present algorithms based on combinatorial arguments. In addition we show how we can construct quite complicated shaped sets R while maintaining the combinatorial properties.

In this paper we deal with the location of hyperplanes in n-dimensional normed spaces. If d is a distance measure, our objective is to find a hyperplane H which minimizes f(H) = sum_{m=1}^{M} w_{m}d(x_m,H), where w_m ge 0 are non-negative weights, x_m in R^n, m=1, ... ,M demand points and d(x_m,H)=min_{z in H} d(x_m,z) is the distance from x_m to the hyperplane H. In robust statistics and operations research such an optimal hyperplane is called a median hyperplane. We show that for all distance measures d derived from norms, one of the hyperplanes minimizing f(H) is the affine hull of n of the demand points and, moreover, that each median hyperplane is (ina certain sense) a halving one with respect to the given point set.

The problem of finding an optimal location X* minimizing the maximum Euclidean distance to existing facilities is well solved by e.g. the Elzinga-Hearn algorithm. In practical situations X* will however often not be feasible. We therefore suggest in this note a polynomial algorithm which will find an optimal location X^F in a feasible subset F of the plane R^2

In this paper we deal with locating a line in the plane. If d is a distance measure our objective is to find a straight line l which minimizes f(l) of g(l) (see the paper for the definition of these functions). We show that for all distance measures d derived from norms, one of the lines minimizing f(l) contains at least two of the existing facilities. For the center objective we always get an optimal line which is at maximum distance from at least three of the existing facilities. If all weights are equal, there is an optimal line which is parallel to one facet of the convex hull of the existing facilities.